Seems like the "your own written review" can cite any source. So if someone gets a hard-on to post Toms Hardware or Hardware Canucks reviews or something should be easy enough to do. Good idea, I have wondered why some people rate parts low. On Newegg you can look and see, "oh, %30 of the bad reviews are things that make me think they don't know how to use it". Or "hmm, %50 fail rate, probably not good".

There have been several instances where I have tried to make a new build by clicking the "System Build" in the upper left corner, but after changing the parts, it edited a build that I had already had saved, even though I did not click the edit option.

Under the previous system, whenever you saved a build, it created an entirely new one, rather than saving over an old one. I liked that system more.

Here very soon I'll be changing it up to be a lot more like the old system. Basically what happened was that I wanted the ability to edit saved and completed builds... but the implementation I ended up with definitely has some usability problems. I'm not happy with the way it ended up, so I'll be changing it soon. Hopefully yet another change in how the builds are managed doesn't frustrate people too much. I'd rather it be right though than stick with what is there now.

Here's what I was thinking of doing:

In a nutshell, changes will always be made on the system build "scratchpad" if you will. Then when you go to save, you will be able to save to a new saved build, a new completed build, or an existing saved or completed build. When you click on "edit" from an existing saved build or completed build, it will copy those parts in the system build scratchpad.

Using that setup, changes are always made in the system build, but then can be copied over an existing saved/completed build if you want. In a way, it's a lot closer to the old way of doing things. Does that sound better?

One thing I found inconvenient about the old system was that saving your build would ALWAYS create a new build. So this proposed change would eliminate that problem and prevent accidental deletions, which is nice.

Alternately, you can improve the current system because it does have some strong points. I think the only major problem with this method is that it isn't always clear what build you are working on, or if you are starting a new one(which resulted in build loss), or whether your changes will be saved immediately or when you click "save".

Leaving it as-is would work if the following changes were made:
1: Add a friendly looking "start new build" button on the top of the page. It could ask "are you sure?" just to make sure you don't lose current work.
2: Make it more clear which build you're working on. There is a dropdown menu displaying this, but it isn't blatant enough. Maybe a bar at the top saying "You are currently working on [build name]"
3: The "Add to saved build" button would instead read "Add to current build", because changes to the current build should not be saved until you click a new "Save your changes" button. (which would, as you described, still ask "Save as [build name]" or "save as new build?"

Does that make sense? I know it's a bit complex but generally I feel like it'll make users feel more comfortable with their work. They'll know which build they're working on and it'll be more dummy-proof when it comes to losing data.
However your proposed changes do make sense also! Sometimes the simplest approach really is the best.

The first half of that post sounds pretty good, until I got down to here; "When you click on "edit" from an existing saved build or completed build, it will copy those parts in the system build scratchpad." Under the old system, editing a build would send it to the scratch pad, but you would have to save it as a new build and then delete the old one. If we are given the option to save to a new or existing build, then I believe it would be more user friendly if the edit button sent those parts to the scratch pad, but could then be saved manually as opposed to automatically. Unless that's what you had intended and I read that wrong.

And thanks for taking the time to talk to people like me. It really means a lot.

I think we're on the same page - it would copy to the scratch pad, but then when you saved you would have the option of saving to an existing build or to a new build. There woudn't be any more automatically updating saved/completed builds.

So as we speak I'm in the midst of transitioning to a slightly different server architecture for the site. If everything works properly hopefully no one will notice a difference at all. :) After that is completed and stable, changes to the partlist will be the #1 priority.

Thanks for more support and definitions to the website Philip! I have a suggestion. What about case fans? Btw this website is very well made and amazingly useful. Also is there any way you could put a warning on our builds if the power supply is too weak? Thanks!

hey, just something i'd like to see:
maybe you could also add support for pc games; so that we can see what the total build cost+games, best places to buy pc games as well as just showing off games that we bought for our builds on r/buildapc.